Week 1 - My First International Friend

Hello! My name is Evita and I’m a freshman here. Class was super fun. However, I’d never expect to get this many assignments in the first 3 days of university. It’s super tiring but I believe I’ll get used to it. However, this article isn’t about me. It’s about my new Vietnamese floor mate.

She has lived in the AP House 1 E Building since the spring semester. She is really friendly and kind to everybody including us, the new residents. We have done several activities together, starting simple like cooking together in the kitchen, pizza party, jogging to the service area, doing ofuro (Japanese public bath), and many more. One day I wonder how come she has so many friends and I found out that she can speak many languages. So I started a conversation asking about her interesting life in a quiet kitchen.

Nguyen Do Quynh Trang, known as Chang, was born on December 27th in Hanoi, Vietnam. When she was on the 6th grade, she moved to Tokyo, Japan due to her father’s work as an ambassy. Basically her family had to move to Japan for 3 years and then come back. But since she was so comfortable living in Japan (and she loves Japanese food), she chose to continue living in Japan with her older sister until now while their parents went back to Vietnam.

The first three years living in Japan was tough for her because she couldn’t speak Japanese fluently. One day she met a friend who is half American and half Japanese, that was her first time using English after learning in a small class during her primary school in Vietnam.

As time goes by, she adapted and became fluent in Japanese. She went to the Kanto International School High school. High school was super fun for her because she joined the volleyball team and the dance club. “It was fun dancing with everybody,” she said. Considering that dancing is one of her hobbies along with singing and photography.

Aside from her high school life, she was the Leader of a volunteering community called ‘Ask Me!’ where she usually wears uniform and ask some tourists if they need help in Shibuya, Tokyo. She said that through this volunteering activity, her English improves a lot.

Now, she is currently a Japanese-basis APU student majoring in Hospitality and Tourism. During her first semester in APU there are a lot of things going on. She joined the fashion show of the Oceania week, dancing in the Vietnamese week, attending the summer festival in Beppu, etc.

She was about to make the same event as ‘Ask Me!’ in Beppu, but since there is a commercial company who can do a better job, it didn’t work out well. After talking to her senpai, she decided to Join APU United Ambassadors (AUA) circle. Her senpai said that in AUA she can make her own event. But at that semester there were too many events already, so it did not go as she planned. She quited the circle and join the ateographer club.

Unexpectedly, aside from being a happy, active girl during her life in Japan, she admit that she used to be a shy, quiet girl back when she was in Vietnam. She’d never think that at the Introduction to Peer Leader Training Course people would call her good at leadership. “It just goes, probably because I went to five school in my life, so yeah, I changed, I can talk to many people, I’m not shy anymore,” she said.

She also told me that she really enjoyed the Introduction Peer Leader Training course. Even though they gave her so many essays, there are so many mix group projects (Japanese and English basis). She said there will be an assignment where we have to hang out once a month and everyone will get busy. “It was hard to manage the group. But, after we finish everything, it was like, super fun,” she told me enthusiastically. She showed me the picture when she hung out and that makes me more curious and excited about this course.